In the last few years, East Passyunk has sprung up as the foodie neighborhood in Philly. Of Philadelphia Magazine’s revered Best 50 Restaurants in Philly list, nine of the restaurants are located along East Passyunk Avenue, with Laurel holding the number two spot. This past weekend was East Passyunk’s Flavors on the Avenue, a festival that offered dishes from 27 of the neighborhood’s best restaurants at discounted prices. It was a great way to check off bucket list restaurants without breaking the bank. Below are the five highlights from East Passyunk’s Flavors on the Avenue.
1. Fond
Fond takes the prize from Flavors of the Avenue, offering seven choices for $6 each. On their regular menu, these items price around $12-16. We tried the duck hearts, pork rillette, salmon tartare, and oysters. Once I got past the reality of what I was eating, the duck hearts blew me away. They were grilled to perfection and accompanied with diced cucumbers and a tahini sauce topped with black sesame seeds. The salmon tartare with nori, sesame and avocado was also a must.
2) Bing Bing Dim Sum
Bing Bing Dim Sum offered pork buns and a corn Rangoon at their stand, but also kept their restaurant open with a full menu service. The pork buns were wrapped in a salted pretzel and came with a honey mustard sauce for dipping. The corn Rangoon could have been my favorite dish of the event. The inside of this fried dumpling was filled with sweet corn and a chipotle mayo, and it was topped with a light sesame sauce.
3) Stargazy
Stargazy is one of those interesting concept restaurants that I would have never traveled to East Passyunk to try, but now that I have, I would travel across the world for it. Stargazy focuses on pie and mash, a traditional British meal. They have both savory and sweet pies that come in three different sizes. Here, we tried the potato masala roll. The roll was almost like a croissant and went perfectly with the spiciness of the masala flavors.
4) Perla
Perla is also one of the most fun and interesting restaurants in Philly. On Wednesday and Sunday nights, they offer a traditional Filipino dinner called the Kamayan (family style) dinners for $40 each. For your group, they will roll out a banana leaf, fill it with garlic fried rice and top it with vegetables, dumplings, a whole fish, pork belly, and chicken. Based on your preference, they will then pour you different sauces for dipping. All of this is eaten with your hands. At the festival, they offered a portion of this dinner with cartons of Pork belly adobo with garlic rice. This time, we used a fork.
5) Sate Kampar
Sate Kampar thrived in this environment by offering traditional Malaysian street food. In a small banana leaf, each person could order a pocket of rice with either a topping of coconut chicken, beef rendang, or a traditional Malaysian mix of cucumbers, eggs, and anchovies. They also had a chicken satay platter with Achat (cucumbers, carrots, peanuts and chili sauce) and Sago Gula Melaka (a coconut cream dessert.)
Keep an eye out for other neighborhood food festivals like East Passyunk’s Flavors of the Avenue to explore different neighborhoods and try new restaurants for cheap.